Founded in the 1820s and named after Francis Cabot Lowell, the inventor of the American power loom, Lowell, Massachusetts, was one of the nation’s most ambitious planned industrial projects. There, at the convergence of two rivers, a group of investors known as the Boston Associates constructed a number of large brick workshops to house the water-powered equipment necessary for each stage of the textile manufacturing process. By consolidating all the stages (cleaning and carding the cotton or wool fibers, spinning them into threads, and finally weaving them into cloth) into one location and relying on the water-powered machines, the Associates were able to produce yardage more efficiently and economically than companies that relied on traditional methods.

By 1840, the city was among the largest manufacturing centers in the United States, its various mills employing thousands of workers. Most of the factory hands were single women, a mixture of immigrants and girls from farming communities around the state who were looking for an opportunity to either contribute to their family’s economic success or to achieve a little bit of financial independence. The “factory girls,” as they were called, signed annual contracts with the companies that owned the mills, which specified that they would live in the company-run boardinghouses, attend church, and follow the time tables and other rules and regulations for moral community living.

As the Lowell system of factory work became more prevalent, so too did the public debate over the justice and morality of such labor. Labor organizers routinely called for a reduction in working hours, citing the ill effects upon the health and morale of workers. Although legislators were often slow to intervene in freely-entered contracts between management and labor, in most states, protective legislation of various kinds did eventually pass, if only to alleviate the concerns and criticisms of labor reformers like Orestes Bronson and William West.